Midnight Eyes by Brophy, Sarah (well read books .TXT) 📕

tightly shut and his hands clenched into painful fists. This self-denial would surely make him a candidate for sainthood, he thought savagely. He ground his teeth together, causing a satisfying shaft of pain. It was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. The temptation to open his eyes and enjoy the sight of her body almost overpowered him.

The knowledge that she would never know if he looked or not tormented him. The pleasure he would feel at the sight of her would almost be worth the guilt he would feel over his small deception. At least it would if lust was all that was at stake, if he could be satisfied by brief carnal pleasure, but it wasn’t and he couldn’t.

So instead he listened.

He listened to the sound of her strained breathing as she tried to undo the more difficult fastenings. He listened to the small, satisfied sigh she gave as the dress finally came undone and slid from her body in a quiet whoosh of fabric.

He knew she was now naked.

Sweat broke out on his upper lip and he quickly licked it away as he strained to hear more. He listened as she shook out the dress and threw it over the trunk and was barely able to stop himself from groaning out loud in protest as he heard her slipping a chemise over her tiny form.

He dared open his eyes again only when he heard the bedclothes shift as she snuggled down under the covers. The dying fire cast a warm glow over the room. In it he could just see her head above the furs, her unbound hair spread out in a dark cloud around her head, hiding the pillow from his view.

“Did you look?” she whispered suddenly, breaking into his thoughts.

He felt a glow start in his chest. Despite the strangeness of their all-too-new, arranged marriage, she trusted him to answer such a question truthfully. It proved that his decision to slow things down had been right. By waiting, he wouldn’t find himself caught with just a pale shadow of a true marriage.

“No, Little One, I didn’t look.”

She yawned, her eyes closing as sleep slowly stole over her. The last words she spoke before sleep finally claimed her kept Robert awake long into the night.

“I don’t think I would have minded all that much if you had looked just a little.”

Robert shifted uncomfortably in the chair. His sleeping mind roamed over battlefields, making him frown.

In the dream, the killing was done, and he’d been sent to count the dead.

He was wounded; blood streaming forth till everywhere he looked was covered with it. The bodies on the field were endless and to count them, he had to reassemble them.

He was covered in their gore, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to finish the task. There seemed to be no end to the corpses. There was field after field of the dead.

It was a nightmare he knew well and it always continued until he managed to shake his mind free from the coils of sleep.

Robert twisted uncomfortably in the chair again; his brow furrowing as the silent battlefield of his dreaming filled with a whimpering. His dream self tried to hunt for the living amongst the dead, but despite his increasingly frantic efforts he couldn’t find anything alive in this familiar nightmare world; couldn’t find the source of the sound of living pain.

It was a sharp, ear-piercing scream that finally dragged his mind back to full consciousness.

By now, the fire had gone out entirely, and the cold had started to seep its way into his bones. At his age sleeping in a chair was no easy thing, he thought morosely, and he couldn’t quite contain the strangled sound that escaped as he tried to struggle upright.

The scream had died and the whimpering returned.

Imogen lay in her bed, tossing and turning, her limbs flailing as she tried to fight off her own night demons. In seconds he was by her side. He pulled her up into his arms as he called her name sharply, his voice infused with a cold panic he had never felt for himself.

Her skin through the chemise was cold to his touch, but a thin film of sweat covered her face.

“Imogen,” he called again, more loudly, shaking her as gently as his fear would allow. She moaned, thrashing her head from side to side but remained in the world of her own imagining. Ice clutched at Robert’s heart, filling his voice with a desperate need.

“Imogen. Imogen. For God’s sake, Imogen, wake up.”

She suddenly opened her eyes wide and screamed. She lifted her hands to her face as her body was racked by loud, heaving sobs.

It no longer mattered to Robert whether she slept or woke; her pain was all too shockingly real either way. He gathered her fragile body to his and rocked her back and forth, running his hands up and down her back to soothe her pain. He found himself babbling words of comfort that even he didn’t fully understand.

Imogen woke in the sheltered warmth of his fierce embrace.

For the first time in longer than she cared to remember, she didn’t shed her night tears forlornly into her pillow. No, they were being absorbed into the blood-warm skin of Robert’s chest and matted into the hair there. It was Robert’s muscular arms that held her gently tight, the rumble of his deep voice seeping into her bones, dulling her lingering fear.

Robert waited patiently for her to cry herself out but still he couldn’t let her go when calm descended.

Now he was holding her for his own comfort and reassurance.

He needed her close, needed to know that she wouldn’t break in two if he let her go. The sound of her gut-wrenching sobs had torn into him, leaving him helpless in the face of her raw, open grief. Many moments passed before he dared to move her slightly away from him so that he could look into her